Astronomy

[KnightmareX13]

Just curious if any members here have a telescope and do stargazing, and if you do post what kind of telescope and maybe what kind of stuff you have observed.
I've got a Celestron PowerSeeker 127EQ
seen: Saturn, Mars, the moon, and Jupiter

[IrkenEvangelion]

That looks awesome. I've been wanting to get a telescope for a long time. I'm into UFO hunting as well as stargazing. I want to get a usb one where I can control the direction and everything right from the computer.. [s]haven't found one though[/s].. I lied, I have found one but the price isn't that nice..

[KnightmareX13]

That looks awesome. I've been wanting to get a telescope for a long time. I'm into UFO hunting as well as stargazing. I want to get a usb one where I can control the direction and everything right from the computer.. [s]haven't found one though[/s].. I lied, I have found one but the price isn't that nice..

Try checking the price come Christmas time odds are it will drop, if your lucky it may drop a couple hundred, that's how I got mine.

[TriLink]

This isn't my exact model, but it's close enough.

http://www.amazon.com/Meade-ETX-125AT-15-Maksutov-Cassegrain-Telescope/dp/B002LV6NOS/ref=sr_1_9?s=photo&ie=UTF8&qid=1286677549&sr=1-9

It seems to have dropped quite a bit in price over the years too. When I first bought the thing back in 2004 (I think), it was something like $1200, but I suppose it's been rendered obsolete by bigger and better telescopes since then.

As for what I looked at; just the usual stuff I suppose. The Moon, Jupiter, Saturn - that sort of thing. Jupiter in particular looks really cool. You can damn near make out all of the swirling bands in it's atmosphere, and the four major moons. It's like it's own little Solar System in a lot of ways.

Never got into looking at actual Stars though. You know their something amazing far away, but at the end of the day, their really nothing much to look at from Earth. Especially where I live with a lot of light pollution and heavy atmosphere distorting the light waves from space, they just look 'meh'.

[ZapX]

I actually just got back from a night of stargazing. I just use a pair of 10x50 binoculars. There's plenty to see even my red light pollution zone. Aside from the big solar system objects I can make out Andromeda, the Orion Nebula (mind you they're just smudges of white dust in varying shapes), and lots and lots of star clusters. If I go out an hour or so to dark skies I can see even more things. For me the excitement comes in knowing just what it is I'm looking at even if I'm not looking at it in great detail. I'd like to buy a nice scope sometime for looking at DSOs but I don't have the cash to get a quality one right now.

[CorporalChaos]

http://www.meade.com/product_pages/lx90_series/lx90_8sc/lx90_8sc.php

I've got one of these, although it's an older model from 2002 that I got secondhand in 2004 for about $500. The autofinder drive has sadly gone kaput in the last couple of years, probably due to a short somewhere, but it's still pretty fun to use just with a finderscope.

I actually used it last night. Looked at the double cluster in Perseus, the Andromeda galaxy and its two satellites, and Comet Hartley 2, which was about like almost every other comet I've seen, and just a fuzzy ball.

I also continued my experiments with trying to take photos of Jupiter by using a video mode on a compact camera as a webcam. I'm still tinkering with the process of actually getting the processing done correctly and efficiently, but here's what I ended up with with last night's try.



I believe the moon at upper left may be Io, but I'll have to consult a table to make sure.

[TehDonutKing]

I'm very interested in astronomy, astrology, and ufology; but I haven't been able to do much due to the cost of a good telescope and all the damned light pollution.

By the way, anyone else think the three aforementioned studies should be considered the same?

[Uriel Septim VII]

When I was nine or so I got a telescope (as requested) for Christmas. Then I realized it didn't have a lock-on feature for celestial bodies. So I gave up.